Pants! Pants! Pants!!!

(It’s like “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, see…except, you know, with pants.)

Nominations are closed on the 2008 Internet Pants Of The Year Pageant. I must say that I’m terribly pleased with the enthusiasm that this experiment has been met with, nearly from the very beginning. In fact, as I write this, satellite trucks from two different local network affiliates are parked in the street outside my house, with up-and-coming mid-market broadcast journalists are scraping their teeth with their fingernails as they prepare to throw a live IPotY update to the studio at the top of the hour.

Circumstances and overwhelming popular demand have led to my making this into a true competition, with not one, but three entrants. We have:

The pair I bought at a local sporting-goods store over the weekend. This was pretty much the perfect clothes-shopping experience for the average American male. (1) I bought them at a store not known for selling clothes — a hardware store would have been optimal, but a sporting-goods store works, too; (2) I bought them chiefly because they were dirt-cheap ($35 clearanced down to $19); and most critically (3) They were identical to the pants I was wearing at the time.

“You bought that didn’t change or expand your wardrobe in any way whatsoever,” you’re saying. “Nice going.” You know I hate to reinforce stereotypes but I’m willing to bet that the men and the women are putting different inflections on those last two words.

Next up, we have

The People’s Pants. You give your audience a hand in the proceedings and that translates to…what, people? That’s right: synergy. Allowing my readers to vote via independent nominations on what pants I should buy should allow me to leverage my brand across the Internet, print, streaming, and mobile domains.

One pair of pants stood shoulders above the rest, so to speak. It won lots of recommendations on Twitter and lots of recommendations here on the Celestial Waste of Bandwidth. Order has been duly placed.

Finally,

The Mom Pants. A couple of people recommended pants from a specific retailer with internet, catalogue, and brick-and-mortar storefronts. I suddenly remembered that my Mom had given me a gift card to this same establishment for my birthday. I’d been carrying it in my wallet for months, awaiting a day when I could hit one of this operation’s stores here in New England.

“Foul…foul!!!” you cry. “How can any pants compete against a birthday gift from your Mom?” Good point, and that doesn’t even touch on the fact that these pants cost me just $5 in shipping after I applied the gift card to the purchase.

There is indeed an argument to be made that I should not be more fond of a gift from my beloved Mother than I am from something that was just sort of chosen randomly from a pile somewhere. Those arguments are made by cold-hearted bastards, for which both the Internet and the adjustible-rate mortgage business is so rightly famous.

In fact, the Mom pants just arrived today. I have taken a series of “unboxing” photos, to give my readers that thrilling “You Are There” sensation that acts as a fine improvement over the sensation “You Are Here In Your Office, Doing The Actual Work Which You Were Hired To Perform.”

If I were to announce that identities of these three pageant finalists before the results were published, I’d have the three pants companies lobbying me with gift baskets, press junkets, offers to purchase property from me at grossly-inflated rates…that sort of stuff.

I can’t have that. If I keep the names a secret, there’s a good chance that every pants company will send me free stuff, just to hedge their bets. That sounds much better, doesn’t it?

Another shout out for the Nemesis Knickers! I think Perez Hilton wears them, not that this allegation should sway your decision. You, Mr. Ihnatko are my taste-maker. By the way, if you ever find yourself in the mid-west, you should go shopping at a fleet-farm. You’d loose yourself in a wonderland of stump-pullers, pneumatic jacks the size of young hippopotami, fishing tackle, dynamite and of course, pants.

Don’t assume that all females look for the latest fashion and eschew the old pair of pants that they just threw out. I have several pairs of pants that I can’t bear to part with even though 1) they are now too big for me by several sizes or 2) they are tattered beyond repair. If I could find another pair of fitted black pants with side pockets deep enough that I wouldn’t fear for the life of my ever present iPhone, I would buy them in a flash. And for a good red sweater like the one that is rapidly thinning at the elbows, I would sell my sister. Come to think of it, if there were any offers for my sister, I might consider them. But I warn you, she comes with 12 Russian Wolf Hounds (Borzoi).

Andy,
What about the pants man, what about the pants? I realize I’ve reached a sad point in my existence when I check back to your site not for insightful electronic reviews or your pithy well versed humor, nay, I want to know about the pants…….sigh, i think I need to get out of the house more.